I flipped off the guard that shoved me through Angel’s door. At least he’d taken those stupid chains off of my wrists. What exactly did they expect me to do on the way up here, attack someone? Give me a fucking break.

Turning around to give the vampire a piece of my mind, I paused. He was standing behind his desk, watching something move on the floor. There was an angry squawk, followed by a fluttering of feathers that made him actually jump up onto the desk. “Angel?”

“Shut up or you’re going to make it attack.”

Shifting on my feet, I peered around the closest chair and had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. That had to be the largest rooster I’d ever seen. It was strutting back and forth looking as pissed off as roosters usually did. What I didn’t understand was why in the hell he had one in his office.

“I think you need some alone time with your cock there, so I’ll just have Boris the not so friendly guard, drag me back to my cell. You two play nice.” I started to head towards the door when he let out a very unmanly noise.

The rooster had hopped up onto the chair and was giving Angel a bird’s version of the evil eye. “Get that thing away from me.”

“Tell you what I’m going to do. You explain why you’re fooling around with a rooster and maybe I’ll see about making it go away. And this had better be good.” Leaning against the wall, I waited to hear what he was going to say.

“There was a demon here, he said something I didn’t understand and left the damn bird as a gift. I don’t want it, I don’t like it, and it used those spiney things on its legs to tear my pants!” If he backed up any further, he was going to fall off of the desk.

“Those ‘spiney things’ are called spurs and you’re lucky it only tore your pants.” I started to move towards the desk and the rooster fixed its beady little eyes on me, puffing out its feathers. This was not going to be fun.

“Watch it Lindsey, that’s just what it did before it went after me.”

Two steps later, I was scrambling to get up onto the desk. Angel wouldn’t move over, so I shoved him sideways. The rooster’s beak caught me in the leg, making me hiss. “You evil, feathered, son of a bitch!”

Angel looked rather amused until the bird made a leap towards the two of us. Then he tried to hide behind me, which pushed my body too damn close to the edge. “Some Champion you are.”

“I have a thing about chickens.”

I shot him a look. “Really? I hadn’t fucking noticed. And how the hell can you have a thing about chickens? It’s a damn bird; you’re bigger, get down there and bite its head off or something.”

“Bite its head off?” If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he’d just turned a little green.

I looked around on the desk for something to use as a weapon. Reaching down, I grabbed a folder and threw it at the rooster, making the bird go backwards. Then it lunged forward again, almost getting onto the desk with us.

“Oh good job Lindsey, now you’ve pissed it off.”

Smacking him on the arm, I tried to grab the phone only to discover that the cord had been pecked through. The next set of squawks almost sounded like laughter. “I don’t think that’s a regular rooster.”

Trapped on a desk with a scared vampire while being circled by a possibly demonic rooster was not the way I’d planned on dying. “Give me your coat, Angel.”

He wrapped his arms around his body. “I don’t think so.”

“Give me your fucking coat or I’m going to push you off the desk.” I wasn’t kidding around either.

With a sigh, he took the coat off and held it out to me. “You’d better not ruin this.”

The rooster started to come closer, causing Angel to panic. “What do you think you’re doing, Lindsey?”

With a yell, I jumped off of the desk and wrapped the rooster up in Angel’s coat. It flailed around, trying to kick me with the spurs and making a racket that was probably waking the dead that were currently housed in the building. I wrestled it to the door and shoved it out into the hall, still wrapped in the coat. Then I slammed the door shut.

I wiped at the sweat running down my forehead. “There, the big bad bird is gone. You can come off of the desk now.”

Angel came stalking in my direction. “My coat! You let it have my coat!”

“You want your coat; it’s out there with the damn bird from hell.” I motioned towards the door.

I could hear screams coming from the hall which lead me to believe that the rooster was loose again. Angel looked from me to the door and back again. “You know, I never liked that coat anyway.”